Erotica meets the apocalypse in James Cox’s The Last Cowboy, when a deadly plague renders the human race all but extinct, and sex becomes a little bit like salvation for Benjamin, the last cowboy in existence on the wild frontier of Texas.
Benjamin singlehandedly works his ranch and sustains himself off the land, and it’s been a god-awful lonely way to live, in the three years since the plague wreaked havoc across the country, but what else can you do but live when you’ve survived the near end of the world?
Human contact is exceedingly rare, and the only intimacy Benjamin finds is what he can provide with his own hands. Strangers aren’t to be trusted when you don’t know a man’s agenda, but there’s also an undeniable temptation to make a human connection when, for so long, the only true companionship you’ve known has been with your horse. When city boy Cody stumbles into Benjamin’s life, dragging the lawlessness of the city right to Benjamin’s doorstep with him, trust is tested, vigilante justice becomes the only law a man needs to dispatch his enemies, and sex is like the answer to everything, because the denial of that which you’ve craved for so long, then finally have access to, is like a feast for a starving man.
And in the end, there is also hope for the future.
This short and sexy little story isn’t The Stand or I am Legend, nor is it set in a dystopian Mad Max sort of future. What it is, is the story of a lonesome cowboy who finds someone to connect with, someone worth protecting, and someone worth imagining a future with.
Yes, I’d have liked a bit more weight and depth to this story, but that’s the fault of my expectations more than anything else. Taking The Last Cowboy for what it’s meant to be—an erotic story of denial and the unlimited pleasure of fulfillment—it works absolutely fine.
Buy The Last Cowboy HERE.